Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/74



We must not say we are not ashamed to acknowledge; assume is the word. We must not call this assumption a Divine work. A chapter must not be headed demonstration but hypothesis. The earth must not be called a star; the word implies motion.

It will be seen that it does not take much to reduce Copernicus to pure hypothesis. No personal injury being done to the author—who indeed had been 17 years out of reach—the treatment of his book is now an excellent joke. It is obvious that the Cardinals of the Index were a little ashamed of their position, and made a mere excuse of a few corrections. Their mode of dealing with chap. 8, this problematice videtur loqui, ut studiosis satisfiat, is an excuse to avoid corrections. But they struck out the stinging allusion to Lactantius in the preface, little thinking, honest men, for they really believed what they said—that the light of Lactantius would grow dark before the brightness of their own.

1622. I make no reference to the case of Galileo, except this. I have pointed out (Penny Cycl. Suppl. 'Galileo;' ' Engl. Cycl. 'Motion of the Earth') that it is clear the absurdity was the act of the Italian Inquisition—for the private and personal pleasure of the Pope, who knew that the course he took would not commit him as Pope— and not of the body which calls itself the Church. Let the dirty proceeding have its right name. The Jesuit Riccioli, the stoutest and most learned Anti-Copernican in Europe, and the Puritan Wilkins, a strong Copernican and Pope-hater, are equally positive that the Roman Church never pronounced any decision: and this in the time immediately following the ridiculous proceeding of the Inquisition. In like manner a decision of the Convocation of Oxford is not a law of the English Church; which is fortunate, for that Convocation, in 1622, came to a decision quite as absurd, and a great deal more wicked than the declaration against the motion of the earth. The second was a foolish mistake: the first was a disgusting